WhirlwindBrushMethod/WBMDiscInitial
Discussion of original concept
All this stuff was posted while the project was in its planning stages, before the first part went up.
If anyone has some ideas for rules which should be added or taken away, speak up. My current plan is to whip up a front page and write a starter myself (once the holidays are over and I'm no longer working 10-hour shifts at the record store), but anyone else is welcome to beat me to the punch if they want. I don't need to be the Maximum Leader; I just want to help tell a cool Exalted story, because I don't have a game right now. I'll take care of moderator duties, but in this context that will probably just involve doing some basic coordination stuff and making sure that stories are structured properly (i.e., links to previous and next episode, indexes, pagename formats, &c.). I think I'll also reserve the right of final arbitration for any conflicts which arise. I can also do proofreading or "prereading" for anyone who wants it.
Again, if anyone else has ideas they think would make this project more fun, post them.\\ _Ikselam
As an aid to consistent characterization, it might be useful for major characters to have little 'cast bios', once it's clear that they're in fact major characters. - FWW
Actually, having an "info page" for each story might not be a bad idea. It could have tiny character blurbs, cursory overviews of the plot to date, stuff like that.\\ _Ikselam
Just to throw something out there, I'd love to see a story set in Malfeas with Infernal Exalts as protagonists. - Quendalon
That would probably be more of a single-person project, since no uniform interpretation of what Infernal Exalted are currently exists. FWW thinks they should be one thing, I think they should be another, and from what's currently in canon, GCG has his own ideas which are different from either. To make matters worse, as of now, none of the three interpretations are completely written down.\\ Anything I come up with will probably involve Solars, or possibly a mixed group of some kind. All I can say for sure is that I won't do an Abyssal story or a Realm story. But like I said, anyone's welcome to come up with his or her own story pilot. \\ _Ikselam
Meh. I'm, personally, not wild about freeform 'forum-style/fanfic' roleplaying. Not my thing.
On the other hand, I'd strongly urge ya'll to check out Universalis, if you haven't. It could fit into this quite nicely. :) (http://universalis.actionroll.com/) - DS
Universalis sounds a lot like what happens when I just sit around with my friends and shoot the shit. I don't need to buy a book to know how to do that.\\ _Ikselam
It is and it is. Universalis is a more structured form of group storytelling, used to moderate who has control over the flow of the story at the moment, and how they can use that control.
Does that need rules? No, you can do that on your own. Can rules make both the process and the end result more satisfactory? Yep, sure can. If they couldn't, then RPGs wouldn't exist, and one of the primary focuses of them wouldn't be on those rules. But this is getting tangental to your detailed proposal; if you want to spar over game design theory stuff, we should probably get a Discussion :) - DS
Ikselam, it sounds awesome! I'm sure the Abyssals front has a few ready soldiers, incidentally. :-) Balthasar (p.s., Hell, I'm sure the Realm front does too.)
It sounds very awesome. I like the idea of info pages for the individual stories -- perhaps best to do each story as it's own info page, with generic information about major characters and other stuff. The info page would also include the queue, and links to each of the individual episodes of the story. Anyway, looks fun! -CrownedSun
Balthasar - what about the Siddies? -- Senji (might be up to putting together a Siddy story-start after the holiday season...)
Somehow, I imagine a lot of people will want to take a crack at wrapping their head around everyone's favorite holy politicians. Hell, I do :-) - Balthasar
I already have and thats been fun so far. Looking forward to the start of this Ikselm it all sounds grand - Ageis
You mentioned you're doing this because of a desire for a storytelling fix, Ikselam. Would anyone object to doing a story in which the majority of the characters have fully detailed sheets? We could work up a voting system for experience gains and such. It seems a somewhat flawed idea, but I know it could work out with a little thinking ^^ - Balthasar
I see nothing wrong with statting up characters if you really want to. I'd rather this not be a glorified PBEM, though, so I'm not going to say "yeah, you should stat out everyone, make sure any featured Charms do exactly what the rules say they do, and roll out combat and other important actions." I crave drama, not rules crap. \\ _Ikselam
Writing up character sheets? That could have the unfortunate effect of drifting this from "round robin story" to "play-by-post RPG". If I understand ikselam correctly, we aren't doing this to PLAY Exalted; if you want to play Exalted online, there are a lot of venues for that. Of course if you just want to write up sheets, don't let me stop you. :) - Quendalon
Not suggesting a game, so much as a semi-"technical" tale. You know, just a story where you can point at any given section and say, "Hey, cool - I know what Charm he used to do that." Or, "that was definately a +2 stunt". For us Exalted geeks ;-) Balthasar (p.s., This implies that I'm assuming there will also be plenty of stories based more on the feel of the books than the system within books, too!)
Also remember that supplementary material is not binding in any sense. You may write up Odmog One-Eye's character sheet so that he has Adamant Countermagic, but unless someone also explicitly includes that fact in the story itself, then I can still write a segment of the story in which Odmog cannot counter the Rune of Singular Hate because he lacks Adamant Countermagic. - Quendalon
I'd like to have a system where we document, in an easily-accessed form, the data we could learn from the stories themselves, but I don't advocate any more structure than that. Any kind of proactive sheet-writing seems counterproductive to me. Like Quendalon, I'd much rather this be "a story that looks like it's set in Creation" than "a story that could be logs of an Exalted chronicle". - willows And, incidentally, I have a writing style where it'll be useful to have a key of some kind, but I do very poorly drawing upon matterial like, "Veronica is a really good archer."
Alright, you picky bastards! ;-) I'll just wait to see how it looks. Balthasar
Okay, I got some ideas, will probably start trying to form them into a coherent narrative around New Years. Just need to refine the ideas in the first one (which is looking like Solar + DB + Sid + sort-of Lunar), and decide if I can actually do justice to the second one (Slug Throws A Calibration Party). Also got this idea for a dorky Abyssal Sherlock Holmes ripoff, but I'm not really wired properly for mystery, so it probably won't happen. \\ Will probably start thinking about what I want the front page to look like before then. Can anyone think up a clever name for the project? Because I sure can't.\\ _Ikselam
How about a story with outcaste dragon blooded? The forth coming book has my brain ticking over with ideas, I've always been fond of the motley band of outlaws overthrowing the empire. Ageis
Yay the Slug! I'll think on names...wow I just saw about 30 names run through my brain. Hate that. They all sucked! - Telgar
Not to annoy you mate but are you still doing this thing? - Ageis
Yes, I'm working on it. After considering three or four ideas which went nowhere (but might get resurrected later), I think I have something that'll work. I may try to throw together a front page tomorrow night, since I finally have a non-completely-sucky idea for a title. Remember, boys and girls, nothing is stopping you from writing a starting part of your own (well, besides me not putting up a front page, but see previous sentence). Since I am working full-time, I do not have the kind of unlimited free time that I did back in school. But rest assured, progress is being made. I started on an outline earlier today. I might be able to complete something by Saturday, but I'm not making any promises.\\ _Ikselam
I, for one, am really excited to see the starter piece. This could possibly be the coolest use of the wiki that we've seen so far. I'm aquiver with desire to see how it turns out. -- DaveFayram
The first chapter is up! Three cheers for Roger! I'll happily proofread for you; I was looking forward to have something to read. - willows
